s many as twenty sleeper
cells are operating
throughout Europe, an
intelligence source told
CNN on Friday.
The cells, made up of between
120 to 180 people, were
reportedly planning attacks in
France, Germany, Belgium and
the Netherlands. The source said
that intelligence agencies have
identified an imminent threat to
Belgium, causing Jewish schools in the
country to close on Friday.
Belgian police are holding 13 suspects
detained during a dozen raids across
the country on Thursday against an
Islamist group and a further two
people targeted by the investigation
were held in France, state prosecutors
said.
Police in France arrested a dozen
people suspected of helping the
Islamist militant gunmen in last
week's Paris killings, the city
prosecutor's office said on Friday as
US Secretary of State John Kerry
arrived for talks.
The arrests came after Belgian police
killed two men who fired on them
during one of about a dozen raids on
Thursday against an Islamist group
and German police said they had
arrested two people following a raid
on 11 properties linked to radical
Salafists.
The arrests in France centered on
southern Paris suburbs including the
Montrouge area where a young
policewoman was killed in the attacks,
the arrests were for suspected
"logistical support" for the shootings,
an official said.
A spokesman told a news conference
there was no apparent link to last
week's Islamist attacks in Paris and
the identities of two gunmen killed
during one of the raids in Belgium, in
the eastern town of Verviers, had yet
to be confirmed.
As well as guns and explosives, police
uniforms were found in the apartment
at Verviers, he said. Officials have said
they feared the group was about to
launch attacks on police stations.
Investigators are still poring over the
complex chain of events that led to
three French nationals - two brothers
with Algerian roots and a third of
African extraction - perpetrating the
worst attacks on French soil for
decades.
Belgian investigators said they are
trying to establish if a man detained in
the city of Charleroi on suspicion of
arms trafficking had any links with
Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who
killed four Jews at a kosher
supermarket in Paris last week.
His lawyer Michel Bouchat told French
media the man was not an associate of
Coulibaly and had merely sold him a
car. The man in question already
contacted police on Tuesday to say he
had had contacts with Hayat
Boumedienne, the partner of Coulibaly
now believed to be in Syria.
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